Tagged with “psychology”
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Dr. John Riolo, "The Insider" interviews Dr. Scott O. Lilienfeld, co-author of 50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions About Human Behavior with Steven Jay Lynn, John Ruscio, and Barry Beyerstein published by Wiley-Blackwell.

In this episode, R. Trent Codd, III, Ed.S., LPC, LCAS interviews Howard Rachlin, PhD about his work in the area of self-control. In this episode they discuss:

* How self-control and willpower are conceptualized from a behavioral perspective
* An overview of the research literature pertaining to discount functions
* Applied implications of this experimental work for helping clients with addictions and other behavioral problems involving self-control

Bruce M. Hood is chair of the Cognitive Development Center in the Experimental Psychology Department at the University of Bristol. He was a research fellow at Cambridge and has been a visiting scientist at MIT and professor at Harvard. Hood has received many awards for his work in child development and cognitive neuroscience. His newest book is Supersense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable.

In this discussion with D.J. Grothe, Bruce M. Hood explains how his agenda is different than the common skeptical agenda to disprove supernatural claims, and instead is an attempt to explain why people believe hold such beliefs in the first place. He argues that everyone is born with a "supersense," an instinct to believe in unseen forces and to recognize patterns and infer their causation, citing examples such as seeing Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich, or the case of the "haunted scrotum." He explains how this supersense is universal, and that even skeptics and rationalists often exhibit it in their lives through rituals and the owning certain valued possessions, such as Richard Dawkins’ prizing of objects once owned by Charles Darwin or MIT growing saplings from the tree under which Newton first discovered the laws of gravity. He details how rituals give a perceived sense of control to believers, and how they may actually affect a believer’s performance. He talks about the "secular supernatural," contrasting it with the "religious supernatural." He argues against Daniel Dennett’s and Richard Dawkins’s thesis that religious belief results primarily from indoctrination in childhood. And he defends the position that unbelievable beliefs serve important social functions.

Lone Frank, author of "Mindfield" talks to the RSA. This from their site: "Join Lone as she investigates the neural basis for empathy and morality, and looks at the economic, legal and political ramifications of the ‘social brain’. What does it really mean to be human? What is the neurological nature of religious experience? Is there really a science of happiness? And how can we harness the power of the ‘neurorevolution’ to change the world?"